As a leading crypto fund administrator, Trident Trust needed a faster, more accurate way to calculate daily NAVs across hundreds of digital assets. At one point, manual data sourcing was no longer scalable. That’s why they turned to CoinAPI’s crypto price API to automate reporting and boost auditor trust.

For over 40 years, Trident Trust, has been known as a global leader, providing trusted fiduciary, corporate, and fund administration services to international financial companies and professional firms. Their global team supports over 700 alternative asset funds worldwide - from new, up-and-coming managers to multi-billion-dollar giants. This trust is built on a powerful mix of deep industry knowledge, modern technology, and a strong promise of personal service and long-term relationships.

Trident Trust was among the first fund administrators to embrace digital assets and has become a leading global crypto fund administrator as a result. Because they started early, they gained a deep understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities in the crypto space. Today, their award-winning specialist team supports more than $10 billion in digital assets. Their leadership is regularly recognized by the industry with numerous awards as they continue to innovate for clients and expand into new frontiers like tokenized funds.

The Challenge: Manual retrieval of crypto spot prices was slowing the NAV Calculation

Before using CoinAPI, Trident Trust retrieved daily cryptocurrency spot prices manually from multiple sources — a time-consuming process that also introduced operational risk. For a fund administrator, pricing underlying assets accurately is mission-critical. With some clients trading a high volume of cryptocurrencies, automating this process became essential not just for speed, but for risk reduction and audit confidence.

At the heart of fund administration lies the Net Asset Value (NAV) calculation. The NAV is essentially the fund's official "price tag" for a single day, representing the value of one share of the fund. It’s calculated by taking the total value of all assets (like cryptocurrencies), subtracting all liabilities (like expenses), and dividing by the number of shares. This single number is crucial because it determines the price at which investors buy into or sell out of the fund and is the primary measure of the fund's performance.

For a digital asset fund, the most important and, at the same time, the most difficult part of this calculation is getting the price of each cryptocurrency right. With markets that never sleep and prices that change every second, finding an accurate, reliable daily closing price is a major challenge. Before using CoinAPI, the Trident Trust team manually sourced these from different platforms.

This manual process had two main problem areas:

• It was slower and inefficient: Team members spent hours just collecting the raw data they needed. This was a significant operational drain, especially for funds holding a large and diverse portfolio of tokens.
• It created risk: Manually calculating the NAV with prices pulled from various places opened the door to inconsistencies and potential errors. For a number that auditors scrutinize and investors depend on, this was a risk that needed to be eliminated.

To serve their clients better, Trident Trust knew they needed to automate this process with a single, trusted source of data.

The Solution: How CoinAPI’s crypto price API automated NAVs

Trident Trust’s search for a data provider was made simple when one of their main crypto fund clients recommended CoinAPI. After reviewing the service, it was clear that CoinAPI was the right choice. It met all of their key requirements:

• Wide Market Coverage: CoinAPI provided data for a huge number of cryptocurrencies, including the smaller-cap tokens that some of their clients trade.
• Access to Historical Data: The ability to pull prices from specific past dates is essential for calculating NAVs correctly, as required by a fund's official documents.
• Data Reliability: Most importantly, the data had to be accurate and trustworthy. CoinAPI provided the confidence the team needed, both for their work and for the funds’ auditors.

The Trident Trust team used C# on .NET to connect with CoinAPI's historical price data feed. The new, automated system transformed their workflow. A task that used to take hours of manual work was now done with the "click of a button." The team can now download hundreds of daily crypto prices in just a couple of seconds. This automation has dramatically improved the efficiency of calculating the NAV.

Beyond speed, the accuracy of the data has given both the Trident Trust team and their clients’ auditors extra confidence in the pricing. This allows Trident Trust to better serve its most demanding clients and strengthen its position as a top-tier administrator in the digital asset space.

The work with Trident Trust shows how even complex fund administration workflows can be streamlined with a reliable cryptocurrency data API.

Advice from Trident Trust

Based on their experience, the team at Trident Trust offers advice for other companies looking for a crypto data provider:

"Reliability of data, market coverage, and latency were determining factors in our selection process. Other factors which need to be taken into consideration are the API documentation and efficient communication from the data provider."

Built for the Future of Digital Assets

With a fast, reliable, and automated data solution in place, Trident Trust is better equipped than ever to handle the needs of the growing digital asset market. The partnership with CoinAPI provides a solid foundation for their award-winning services, allowing them to continue innovating and leading the way in fund administration.

Having CoinAPI in place enables Trident Trust to better serve its high-frequency fund clients trading in large and diverse crypto portfolios. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also strengthens Trident Trust’s competitive position as a digital asset fund administrator.

Join leading crypto fund administrators like Trident Trust, who rely on CoinAPI for accurate, automated pricing data.

→ Explore our crypto price API solutions

About Trident Trust

Trident Trust is a global fund administrator with a track record of over 40 years, providing services to financial institutions, professional intermediaries, and private clients. Their digital asset team supports funds worldwide with over $10 billion under management, offering deep expertise in the specific needs of the asset class. Over the last decade, Trident Trust has earned 25+ awards for its services, including 'Best Administrator – Digital Assets' in 2023 and 2024 from Hedgeweek and the Malta Cryptocurrency Awards.

About CoinAPI

CoinAPI provides fast, reliable, and high-quality cryptocurrency market data from +380 exchanges worldwide. Offering both real-time and historical data through flexible and easy-to-use APIs, CoinAPI helps businesses - from fund administrators to fintech developers - to build powerful tools, conduct accurate analysis, and make informed strategic decisions.